The Music Tapes + Nana Grizol + Brian Dewan - Middle East (Cambridge, MA; Mar. 2, 2009)

As a supporter of both the Elephant Six collective and the experimental music community as a whole, I was happy and unsurprised to witness dual drum kits and microphones askew—not to mention an elevated TV and a seven-foot wooden metronome—on stage at the Middle East for The Music Tapes concert. The scene was set for whatever manner of performance art the evening’s musicians, including Brian Dewan and Nana Grizol, had in store.

Brian Dewan, a blazered, nutty-professor type, kicked off the evening in quasi-solo form, accompanied by an electric zither of his own concoction. The strange instrument displayed its numerous capabilities throughout Dewan’s first few numbers, ranging from soft harp-like strums to distorted electric guitar riffs to warm bass thumps. The lyrical content was no less original—not to say creepy—as the William Shatneresque baritone crooned about cadavers and unruly kids in a sort of postmodern realm. The song structures seemed to draw most heavily on folk, rock, and a weird mashup of storytelling and church music. Dewan also performed a handful of tunes with an accordion, and it struck me that he’d be the ideal sort of act you’d book for your kid’s eleventh birthday, if your kid were precociously twisted and he wasn’t into clowns.

Next, the eight members of Nana Grizol packed themselves between stage pieces and latent guitars. Lead by Theo Hilton, they unleashed a pounding stampede of sound that utilized syncopated beats from the parallel drum sets, your everyday guitar/bass/keys, and frenetic blasts from the brass and woodwind section. It was difficult not to immediately recognize that Nana Grizol’s train-like parade of music closely resembled fellow Elephant Six-er, Neutral Milk Hotel. I was most impressed by Nana Grizol’s utilization of their various orchestral permutations, as the first handful of songs seemed to tumble forward but erupt into distinct choruses filled with drawn-out harmonies of trumpets, clarinets, a harmonica, and of course the euphonium, which would come into its own during The Music Tapes set.

Nana Grizol came across as a somewhat polished experimental act (if polished works in this sense), as the songs, while loud and often aurally harassing, also proved capable of breaking down into light, melodic verse before exploding into a new chorus. While on the topic of levity, banter between members and the crowd only enhanced the Grizol-y charm of the band, suggested by such marsupial jokes as: What does a classy Koala keep in his pouch? Eucalipstick.

As the collectivites soon to re-emerge with Julian Koster and The Music Tapes took a little break, Brian Dewan took the opportunity to project colorful animated filmstrips and explore alternate futuristic societies in which so-called “membi” (pluralized members) are divided into merit-based castes. It was mind-bending, amusing, and completely appropriate.

The Music Tapes came with a personal disclaimer that Julian was both suffering a particularly debilitating bout of the flu and was thus medicated, but that we were going to “have fun together.” He suggested that maybe his cracking voice would be “kinda cool, like Rod Stewart.” Koster opened solo, croaking puerile vocals over the strums of his banjo, and was soon accompanied by the rest of the Tapes, with whom things certainly turned experimental. The drum sets were manned and woman-ed, and The Music Tapes atonally crashed their way through their opening number. In stark contrast, the next number “Schedrevka” was of Ukranian ilk and played on the singing saw which reached soaring falsettos, leaving the audience guessing as to what might come next. True to form, what came next was “The Television Tells Us,” from the 1998 album 1st Imaginary Symphony for Nomad, in which the TV at the back of the stage relieved Koster’s ailing voice via electronic vocals as the band thumped along.

The next tune featured maybe the first marriage of funk and euphonium in which the mutant french horn played a central role in perpetuating the jam. At this point, nothing would surprise me. Koster obliged the crowd by giving “Song For Oceans Falling” a shot, despite the vocal strenuousness involved. It worked, because this was not the kind of performance that required perfect pitch or beautiful vocals. If anything, Julian’s already fragile voice enhanced the nature of the show with its inaccuracies. For one last memorable hurrah, Julian brought his singing saw into the audience as we sat and watched him perform a quiet Christmas tribute in the form of “The First Noel.”

Safe to say, the Athens, Georgians did not disappoint. It took strolling into the brisk Boston night to snap me back into a plane of existence on which everyone but these guys seems to operate.

DOWNLOAD: The Music Tapes - Majesty (MP3) or Follow us for more The Music Tapes MP3s (Twitter)

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